Never Stop Kisakuing - Blog Posts

Sakuma telling Kidou he has better freedom as a part of Raimon and that he knows just by looking at Kidou can be a throwback of Sakuma's lines in Shin Teikoku arc. Sakuma said that "he can't see Kidou's world," but in the ending, it became "I've opened my eyes". Sakuma is the one to reassure Kidou in episode 56, as at that point Sakuma is able to look at Kidou with a clear vision.....

in middle of writing my analysis post, it's gonna be pretty long because i want to tackle as many topics in my to-do as i could in a single post than making short post for each. but honestly the reason why am i not finishing it sooner is because i'm not feeling well lmaooo

currently i'm thinking that sakuma is kind of an unreliable narrator in terms of his insecurity towards kidou. episode 38 and everyday frame it as him feeling like he's not as good as kidou is because sakuma himself mistook it as such. he thought that what he's insecure of is his own ability when it's actually of his place as kidou's friend

but it becomes double unreliable narrator in shin teikoku arc as yes, sakuma's (and genda + fudou but this is not about them) judgement is clouded by meteorite brainwashing but because the emotion he displays is very raw it reveals his Real feelings at the same time. "i can't see your world" = i can't understand you As A Person

even then "sakuma is jealous of kidou's abilities" isn't inherently wrong because he is.. because sakuma's insecurity is deep rooted that he feels bad about every single thing at once, and in ares' timeline where shin teikoku arc doesn't happen you can watch sakuma being left in his issues for a year

Adding to this post with my analysis of the emotional implications of this scene because it gets even crazier when one tries to visualize from Kidou's POV

You can see that Kidou was standing behind Sakuma in the initial composition of the scene's frame. It then switches to Sakuma's close up, which is more or less should be similar to what Kidou's point of view. So what possibly could be going on in Kidou's mind when it happened?

The close up of Sakuma's face ends when he fully turns his head, revealing the eye that's normally covered by his eyepatch and the disheveled hair his Shin Teikoku arc design has.

As one can see on the first post, looking closely Sakuma was drawn in a way that makes him look like his original design with the pulled forward hair and the eyepatch covered right eye, it was what Kidou saw!

What Kidou (and the viewers) initially saw was the Sakuma he knew, the one who played soccer together with him, the Sakuma who is his best friend. But something about it is uncanny, until Sakuma's entire face was shown and it was Shin Teikoku Sakuma that Kidou was seeing. It wasn't the Sakuma Kidou knew.

Even if their scope of love in their writings are different (Sakuma loves Kidou, while Kidou loves EVERYONE including Sakuma) Sakuma and Kidou care deeply towards each other. And it was Kageyama's actual purpose in the arc, to not win the match but rather to inflict as much trauma he could on Kidou by manipulating and hurting (mentally and physically) his best friends against him.

Shin Teikoku arc has really good animation and storyboarding in general; this particular scene has cleverly drawn frames where Sakuma's hair was positioned to look like how he normally looks until he fully turns at Kidou and you can see the the black eye

I don't have frames that are of 1:1 comparison but I hope you get the gist